I would like to introduce into the court of public opinion a piece of evidence that will undermine to a large extent the argument often made – sometimes on these very pages – that George W. Bush is a man of stunted intellect, unable to understand the pernicious effects of his policies.

This evidence is derived from a book written by one of Bush's most fervent admirers, his former speechwriter David Frum. A passage from the book – a work of cringing, bootlicking hagiography called The Right Man – was quoted recently in the London Review of Books, in an article on climate change by John Lancaster. One part of Lancaster's perceptive analysis deals with the politicization of science – especially the anti-science animus of the modern Republican Party. After a brief overview of the history of this phenomenon, Lancaster notes:

What makes this so bizarre are Bush’s private views on energy and oil, as reflected in the various ecologically friendly decisions he has made at his own ranch in Crawford (it uses geothermal heat pumps, and has a 25,000 gallon underground cistern to collect rainwater), and in this passage from his speechwriter David Frum’s book The Right Man:

I once made the mistake of suggesting to Bush that he use the phrase cheap energy to describe the aims of his energy policy. He gave me a sharp, squinting look, as if he were trying to decide whether I was the stupidest person he’d heard from all day or only one of the top five. Cheap energy, he answered, was how we had got into this mess. Every year from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s, American cars burned less and less oil per mile travelled. Then in about 1995 that progress stopped. Why? He answered his own question: because of the gas-guzzling SUV. And what had made the SUV possible? This time I answered. ‘Um, cheap energy?’ He nodded at me. Dismissed.

More or less the only conclusion one can draw from that under-reported passage is that W. is well aware of the realities but has been knowingly acting as a stooge for the oil industry.

Lancaster's conclusion is apt. Bush, like most educated people (and
Bush is actually one of the most highly educated men, at least
formally, to sit in the White House, with degrees from both Yale and Harvard),
is well aware of the damage wrought by the SUV culture, and well aware
of the benefits of cleaner-burning, fuel-efficient automobiles. Yet, as
we know, he has continually expanded the tax breaks that encourage the
purchase of SUVs. His energy policies are almost exclusively pointed
toward expanding the use of automobiles, while discouraging any
restrictions on automakers or energy companies that might curtail the
nation's never-ending oil binge. He knows that these policies cause
more pollution and exacerbate "this mess" we have made of the
environment. But, as Lancaster notes, because the profits of the oil
industry are a higher priority for him, he moves forward with these
policies anyway.

Of course, Bush's "energy policy" cannot be divorced from his "foreign
policy" or his "defense policy" or his "tax policy" or his "economic
policy." All of these policies have as one of their primary goals the
promotion of oil industry profits. And we have seen these profits reach
staggering levels during Bush's terms, profits greater in both raw
terms and relative proportion than any achieved before in human
history. The oil companies are awash in so much cash that they
literally don't know what to do with it all. They have profited more
than any other industry from Bush's world-roiling "War on Terror," even
more than the weapons peddlers, the mercenary companies and the
military servicing and construction giants like Halliburton and Bechtel.

It is not – and has never been – a credible notion that Bush was
unaware of the very real possibility that chaos, ruin, horror and
terror would follow in the wake of his invasion of Iraq. The White
House was well-informed on these points by numerous intelligence
studies and by the warnings of its own allies in the region. No doubt
he hoped that his "war on the cheap" (when it came to troop numbers,
and troop protection, that is) would be more successful, that the
fanciful scenarios concocted by his neocon flatterers and the
Cheney-Rumsfeld "Domination" faction would somehow pan out. But the
risk of that horror and terror was one that he was more than willing to
take.

And why not? As we have pointed out here many times before, the Iraq War was always a win-win proposition for Bush; no matter what the outcome, one of the primary objectives of Bush's administration would be achieved:
the promotion of oil industry profits. A quick, easy subjugation of
Iraq would have given Bush and his corporate cronies direct control of
Iraq's oil – a control which, as Greg Palast points out, they would
have used not to sell all of Iraq's oil but to keep much of it off the
market: a vast strategic reserve to be used to elevate oil prices (and
profits), to dominate the global economy, and as a political weapon to
punish or reward other nations according to their degree of obeisance
to Washington. But even a disastrous outcome to the war – which of
course has come to pass – has accomplished much. The continuing
conflict, plus the growing instability it has sparked or exacerbated
around the world, has poured untold billions of dollars in private
profit, tax money and outright loot (from the Iraqis) into the coffers
of Bush's corporate cronies. It has expanded the Pentagon budget beyond
the wildest dreams of the Dominationists, the armchair militarists of
the "New American Century" ilk. Much of this money has been and will
continue to be fed back into the political machines of the Radical
Right. This forced redistribution of America's wealth to a freakish
fringe of ruthless cliques will skew the national political landscape
for decades to come, allowing these groups to buy and bully and lie
their way into power and/or influence despite the vast unpopularity of
their ideological crankery and sinister agendas.

Victory or defeat, it didn't matter: the "mission" of aggrandizing the
wealth and privilege of the elite interests represented and embodied by
Bush was always going to be "accomplished." Bush knew this. To him, the
game was always worth the candle. The possibility that thousands of
American soldiers would have to die – that hundreds of thousands of
innocent Iraqis would be murdered – that violent sectarians would
subjugate the Iraqis – that multitudes would have to flee their homes
and millions more be left destitute, terrorized traumatized, besieged –
that future generations of Americans would be saddled with
back-breaking debts – that the world would sicken with more hate, more
violence, more grief and revenge – none of this was of any great
concern to Bush. And even though he was well apprised of such
scenarios, no doubt he simply gave his interlocutors "a sharp,
squinting look" and dismissed them out of hand.

George W. Bush is not the stupidest man ever to sit in the White House.
He is probably more intelligent than, say, Harry Truman or Ronald
Reagan or Andrew Johnson, perhaps even Lyndon Johnson. Bush knows, to a
far greater degree than most of us give him credit for, what he is
doing, and why, and the very real effects of his actions. But he is
almost certainly the most withered soul ever to hold the presidency, a
gutted husk whose only flashes of real feeling seem to come in his
rages, his insults, his scorn, his self-righteousness – his baser
instincts, centered only and forever on himself. A man who could do
what he has done – and know what he is doing as he does it – is a
loathsome creature indeed, one who has somewhere, somehow, lost his
humanity.

But this knowingness only compounds the very great guilt he bears for
the many crimes he has committed and countenanced, and the many others
he has set in train. He is not a dupe of the neo-cons, or a puppet
dancing on Dick Cheney's string, or an empty, affable front man. He is
what he says he is: the decider. He is doing what he intends to do. And
he bears the full responsibility for it.